Saturday, November 7, 2009

2 comments:

There is usually one weekend a year when it seems like all of the top teams in the country end up in tough games. Top 25 teams lose to opponents they should have beat. It's late in the year when teams start looking forward to the championship games, or believing the hype about how good they are. Things start going wrong for the team; penalties, turnovers, dropped balls, missed assignments.

It's the weekend when the pretenders are exposed, and the contenders find a way to win - no matter how ugly it might be.

This is the weekend of the year when your team's physical and athletic advantages don't seem to matter. The game simply comes down to your mental toughness; how much you want to win. Can you give it one more play, can you keep your head in the game when your body is telling you to take one play off.

This is when you find out not only who has the best team of athletes, but which team of athletes have the toughness to grind out a win.

It is a dangerous weekend to have a Top 10 target on your back.

The Iowa Hawkeyes have ground out a lot of ugly games. But they won. And they deserved all of the ranking that they had. Unfortunately, it looks like they had but one leader on the team. And he was not able to play the second half. And the rest of the team could not find the will to win.

Oregon beat what could have been the best one-loss team in the country last week. And no matter my rooting interests, I believe that they assumed that mantle of best one-loss team. Their defense held the great athletes of USC to 20 points. Then they listened to the hype all week - they dismantled USC's offense. Is it to much to think that they might have thought that they had out-classed Stanford? Looked past them to their showdown with Arizona for the PAC-10 title? And the defense allowed 51 points. I don't care how good the offense played - they can't make up those numbers.

There were a number of top teams that looked like they weren't really ready to play this weekend. Ours included. But - we won. It wasn't pretty, but it's a W.

Although we might have had our doubts about the outcome of the game, we had bunch of players that fought through and won.

Derrick Morgan:

"I was praying," Morgan said. "I was about out of gas. I was on the sideline, bending over like ‘I got to go back in?' I just had to muster up my strength and just give it one more play. Just trying to reach down deep within and get some strength and power."

And he was instrumental in making sure we got to OT.

Josh Nesbitt:

"I can make it."

CPJ:

"I know you can."

Our offensive leader asked for the ball. He knew the game was in his hands. And he succeeded. And I bet if you pulled the huddle to the sideline and asked who wanted the ball to make that fourth down, every hand would have gone up (with the exception of the O-line; they wanted to hit someone to make sure it happened).

“If you ask the kids to play to win, you’ve got to play to win.” - CPJ

Riley Skinner is of the same cloth, and the whole Wake team showed the same toughness. They hit us in the mouth and bloodied our lip, but by an infinitesimal amount Tech wanted it more, had more mental toughness, and had the better team.

No matter the outcome of the rest of the season, I can rest easy tonight about Georgia Tech's football team. Tech - our team - grew up in front of our eyes and showed a toughness and desire to win that bodes well for the future.

Our Mission....

To abide...To be aficionados. To not only enjoy, but to understand, Georgia Tech football, the ACC, and College Football, in that order. The trained palate perceives more, and thus enjoys more, than the ignorant palate.

About Me

Hash Slinger & Frank Lloyd Wrong are two ardent Georgia Tech fans, hedonists, & men of questionable virtue. They live in Atlanta & their work can be found not only on this blog but also in prison cells & bathroom walls throughout our fine nation. Much like The Dude, who they greatly admire, Hash & Frank abide....